Thursday, December 29, 2016

The Act of Creation

The artist is, of necessity, often alone and silent; breathing, waiting with open concentration, trying first one thing and then another, making and unmaking. Working in their chosen medium to give form to something glorious or needful which clamors from within, an idea eager to be brought forth. The artist suddenly slips out of gatherings, wanders away from groups, goes missing. Know this: if they do not step away and focus the gift when it rises on those feathered wings, the idea will be lost, will vanish like mist with the morning.
The artist wrestles constantly with the irritation of things which reach out to hinder their efforts to create; perfectly legitimate everyday things. The eggs are burning, bills must be paid, cats fed, dishes washed and put away. Thus the disarray which so often surrounds their work. It isn't that they like disorder, it is that they are trying to create something out of unseen, untenable threads; they are not in this world.
An artist would be supremely blessed to have someone who would be willing to do such myriad things unbidden in their stead, for as long as was necessary, without bitterness or judgement. Can you imagine such a one? Who would be willing to do such things without the reward of a glance of acknowledgement, let alone thanks, for who knows how long?
Only if that someone truly understood the artist and their process, and perhaps loved them as well, would they be willing to offer such a wealth of unregarded assistance. It would have to be someone willing to wait and wait and wait for the spell to be broken, for the hunger to finally loosen its hold, for the voices to quiet and sigh into silence. Someone who desired, more than anything, to remain in the shadows, watching the light play across the features of the one much loved. Someone whose reward would be hearing the familiar steps on the boards and, looking up from the work at hand, to meet those eyes still shining with visions of that distant, holy space. Do such persons even exist in this world?

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What I am trying to do here.

Stories of life lived on the mixed grass prairie in Northwest Oklahoma, the lessons gleaned from creation and news of family and friends. There may be poems, if you're lucky. Sometimes I can be a bit preachy, not always, but if I feel it necessary.